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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26043691">To Subdue Without Fighting</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/syailendra/pseuds/syailendra'>syailendra</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Play-by-Play [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, M/M, Spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 4, Unhealthy Relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:07:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,711</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26043691</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/syailendra/pseuds/syailendra</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Observations taken by a victor, accounting for acceptable losses.</p><p>A long-running experiment comes to an end.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Peter Lukas/Jonah Magnus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Play-by-Play [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890547</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>To Subdue Without Fighting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em> “But isn't desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn't the object always absent?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> - Roland Barthes </em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Elias didn’t like to think of himself as the villain of this particular story. He was the villain of every other story, yes, but this one, the story of him and Peter Lukas, was one where Elias would not use the term to describe himself.</p><p>Was Elias the one whose definition of victory included the death of the one who lost? No. Peter made the decision to be difficult and suffered the consequences. Did Elias baldly state that he wanted to take away everything Peter had spent centuries working for? No. In fact, winning the wager allowed Elias to grant Forsaken its own ghastly little domain, which Peter might have enjoyed ruling over had he not gone and tested the Archivist. </p><p>The matter was settled then. Elias was not the villain here. He wouldn’t go so far as to call himself a hero, mind, but the villain? No. That was Peter. Dear darling departed Peter, who had put a knife in sweet Martin Blackwood’s hand without bothering to properly get to know him. Somehow he had thought that would work out. Now here Elias was, having survived, overlooking the world he’d ended. </p><p>Victorious. All-seeing. Alone.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When the <em> Tundra </em> had come to London for what would turn out to be the final time, Peter had not accepted the wager yet. Elias still hadn’t told him what would be necessary for the Panopticon and the Institute to really change hands in the metaphysical sense. He wasn’t sure that Peter would be willing to accept those terms. It was the perfect time, then, to test a theory.</p><p>The thing about Peter was that despite his complete predictability in every other aspect you could think of, he could be a little bit of a rogue element, but only when it came to areas where his allegiance to The One Alone clashed with his history with Elias. Those areas were marvelous testing grounds for Elias’s pet conjectures.</p><p>“You’re going to let him charge into the Unknowing? If he dies, I won’t stick around to listen to you whine about it.” </p><p>Elias smiled, thin-lipped.</p><p>“Don’t you worry, I’ve learned not to expect anything like that from you by now. But that’s beside the point. Have you ever built a pipe system, Peter?” Peter sighed. Elias wasn’t looking at him, was choosing to start pacing the room for effect, but he knew Peter was rolling his eyes. </p><p>“No, of course not. I can’t imagine you have ever built anything with your own hands in your life. I haven’t built a pipe system either, but I do <em> Know </em> how to build one.” Peter crossed his arms, and Elias paused in front of one of the portraits on the wall, one of Barnabas Bennett. “When you finish a pipe system, you have to conduct a hydrostatic test. It involves filling up the system with some kind of liquid—water, usually—so that you can see whether or not the system is strong enough for its intended purpose. Also, this will allow you to detect leaks.”</p><p>Peter sighed again. “You could have said this in one sentence, Elias.”</p><p>“Yes,” Elias said, completing the circle, facing Peter again to grin at him. “To extend the metaphor, I think this is the best pipe system I’ve ever managed to build. Truly a marvel of plumbing. The last system had been very efficient, but not in ways I wanted it to be. It was like… leaving a robot to build a pipe network only to come back and find out that it had built an unmanned combat aerial vehicle instead. A very good one, of course, more than capable of wiping out some unsuspecting cities, but still. Now nobody in the building has any access to hot water.” Then he grinned a little more widely. “You want to say ‘I told you so.’”</p><p>“When you say it first, it takes all the joy out of the idea.”</p><p>“Oh, I know.” He sat back in his chair, looking at Peter fondly. Peter averted his gaze and lit his pipe. Elias had once thrown something at him for that, but they were past such petty disputes now. “I have missed you.”</p><p>Silently, Peter blew out a plume of smoke, raising his eyebrows. This was probably the first time he’d told Peter he’d missed him in fifty years; Elias usually found himself too impatient for drawn-out theatrics, but this time it was necessary.</p><p>“I think you really will enjoy being able to see the Archivist at work. Really, rather impressive, for the time frame—”</p><p>“When have you known me to care? If I wanted to watch the Eye at work, which I don’t, I have had ample opportunity to simply look over your shoulder.” With a thoughtful look, Peter took another long drag from his pipe. “It is an awfully lonely post, though. Gertrude Robinson understood that, you say, but I wasn’t too enthusiastic about the prospect of dealing with her directly. You understand.”</p><p>Hook, line.</p><p>“Of course, of course.”</p><p>“This one, though… When you say I can do what I want with the Institute while the game lasts… Is he here, Elias? Is your current Archivist somewhere in the building?”</p><p>“These <em> are </em> office hours.”</p><p>“A simple ‘yes’ would have sufficed.”</p><p>Sinker. </p><p>Most of the Magnus Institute wasn’t such a lonely place. Outside of his little team of handpicked victims, Elias took care to make sure everyone else had very light workloads and many chances to socialize and grow attached to each other. This ensured a steady stream of interpersonal drama he could amuse himself with: coworkers who fell into bed together despite fraternization policies, petty rivalries carried out through messing with paperwork, a little bit of drug-dealing in shadowy corners. </p><p>It was even easier, then, for Peter to follow the trail, down into the pressure cooker that was the Archival Division, straight to the knot of Loneliness inside the Archivist. Elias felt the chill of Forsaken wrap around him as the air thickened. Peter’s eyes grew huge and greedy. The scars of Tim’s words had marked Jon with exhaustion and self-doubt that went deeper than the marks of the Corruption; he was torn over Sasha; Melanie’s hostility made him wary; Martin— </p><p>“You missed me,” Elias whispered, cool and flat. “When I sent those letters, you were impressed that I’d stooped low enough to start holding your crew against you. Your last refuge, mocked. All these years I’ve breached the <em> Tundra </em> when it suited me. But never quite like that.” He leaned down, reaching to caress Peter’s jaw. “Reading the terms of the wager made you wonder whether that was all I really wanted, or whether perhaps I missed you, whether I just wanted to see you again. You thought that you knew me well enough to conclude that I did. You were right, Peter—I have missed you. Do you like knowing that?”</p><p>All at once the air cleared. Elias did not smile as he kept his eyes steadily on Peter’s, drinking in the stung, furious way his eyebrows drew together.</p><p>“You do,” Elias concluded softly. He withdrew his hand and straightened his posture again. “You like knowing that I missed you. You regret the way we parted last time. Although not really, because it kept your patron well-fed.”</p><p>Peter stood up so quickly his chair screamed with the force of the movement.</p><p>“You could have just warned me off him.”</p><p>“I wanted to make sure that you’d take me seriously.” Now, for the final push. “He’s mine, Peter; I don’t expect you to understand what that means. Sit <em> down, </em> I’m not done with you—”</p><p>“I certainly am—”</p><p>“Sit down. You’ve come so far to see me, and your crew could probably use the leave. We could talk about other things. I know you like the sound of Elias Bouchard’s voice almost as much as I do—I hope you don’t resent me for pulling out this fact. I think it’s quite harmless. Would you like to hear about Jurgen Leitner?” Enticingly, Elias added, “I beat him to death with a steel pipe.”</p><p>At this, Peter sat back down, still fuming, grumbling something about Elias’s new fondness for pipe metaphors. Elias would let it stew. They’d circle back to the topic of the wager later, when Elias had entertained Peter enough that he wouldn’t think this little exchange factored into his considerations, and Elias would finally be able to decide whether or not he would need to reject a hypothesis.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Being with Peter (for a given meaning of the phrase) was about knowing him, not Knowing him. For the longest time, Elias had not turned the Eye’s gaze towards Peter’s head. Elias liked to send the message that he had other things he would prefer to save his energy for. That he not only wanted, but <em> expected </em> Peter to tell him things out of his own free will. When he failed to do so, Elias would remain secure in his knowledge that he understood Peter completely and Peter would feed The One Alone with the shards of unhappiness that wedged themselves in both of them. Their relationship was, if rarely happy, always mutually beneficial.</p><p>Really, what did Elias need to Know about Peter’s story? He’s met the Lukases, every single one of them. He knew what the whole wretched family was like. He’s known Forsaken long before Peter had. It wasn’t hard to put together the pieces he already had in hand to gain a vague picture of the whole. Peter’s life story was about as predictable as the rest of him. </p><p>If Peter caught even a whiff of the fondness Elias felt because of that, he would be gone in less than a second; this was the kind of knowledge that was valuable, at least in the sense that it helped Elias decide on what course of action to take. The kind of knowledge that Elias just liked to have for the sake of having was a whole other thing, and in the case of Peter he was willing to deprioritize. Willing to strategize.</p><p>What could it take to make such a good servant of The One Alone return, again and again, to the same man? What did an avatar of Forsaken look like, in love? Well: he’s met the Lukases, knew what the whole wretched family was like. Still, if one had only ever seen white swans, it didn’t mean all swans in the world were white. Elias never turned down the chance to observe a Lukas.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Exhibit A.</strong>
</p><p>Peter materialized in his office, making Martin drop his pen, before starting to walk around, pausing in front of the portraits on the walls. Making eye contact with paint and canvas. “Did you know, Martin,” he chirped, “that Elias once stabbed me with the stem of a wine glass?” </p><p>Martin sputtered out ‘what’s without really wanting answers. </p><p>Peter went on, saying, “Oh, yes, it was over a funding dispute. Although given the state of our acquaintance at the time, it could have been over any other thing, I suppose. He broke the stem in two, threw the bowl out over the balcony along with some <em> excellent </em> Chardonnay, then stabbed me with the part attached to the foot. Not in front of everyone, of course—that wouldn’t be like Elias at all. I still have the scar. Just south of my collarbone.” A pause. “Well. This was before he went around <em> personally </em> murdering people, so it was quite remarkable at the time! I suppose none of this would seem like such a surprise to you, considering how he’s been acting since you started working here.”</p><p>Then turned to look Martin in the eye, a wan smile shifting the white curls of his beard, before fading back into The Lonely, where Elias lost sight of him. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Exhibit B.</strong>
</p><p>“Has Elias ever told you how these bones found their way here?”</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Exhibit C.</strong>
</p><p>“If the two of you are friends,” Martin said, and Peter turned to squint at him. Martin cleared his throat. “Acquaintances. If the two of you are acquaintances, do you… visit him in prison? Given that you can…”</p><p>He trailed off, making vague hand gestures, referring to Peter’s habit of taking shortcuts through The Lonely.</p><p>“No.” Peter shrugged. Elias had not made any effort to ask him to visit. “No, I don’t. Can’t imagine he’d be too happy to see me if I did.”</p><p>Even now, Peter seemed perfectly content to draw his own conclusions about rejection and process them in advance, entirely without Elias’s input. The kind of thing Elias had allowed to continue to drive him up the wall just because he was fine with keeping Peter as comfortably miserable as he wanted to be.</p><p>Quite frankly, though, with an Archivist just about ready to bring about the Watcher’s Crown, Elias was also impatient to make some tangible progress on this other front. </p><p>“I want you to mark the Archivist,” Elias had told Peter, when he’d asked about what Elias wanted if he won their little game. “Take him into The Lonely. Allow him to find his way back out. Quite simple, I think. You can even toy with him while he’s in there, if it suits your fancy. He’s only missing the mark of Forsaken, so if you could so kindly—”</p><p>“This again.”</p><p>It really was a remarkable achievement, Peter’s ability to ignore the way he assigned so much significance to these words. They were proof that he was the only one who held the blueprint of the Watcher’s Crown, other than the one who had drawn it up himself. </p><p>By this point, red roses were signs of brewing fights. Getaways marked points where compromises, fully accepted by neither of them, were created. They were tenderest when they could not forgive each other. Love was an excuse, hurriedly spoken to anyone who asked why they were still together. Usually the word got thrown around more the closer Elias got to asking for a divorce. They’ve ruined so many things for each other.</p><p>But you had to be able to give gifts somehow.</p><p>“Just because you’d failed so miserably, Peter, doesn’t mean everybody else will. Since you have a track record of being uncooperative—”</p><p>“Really, does that surprise you, given what you’re asking—”</p><p>“—I thought you might be more inclined to give it a chance if you had something to gain from it as well.”   </p><p>“Something to gain, you say,” Peter whispered against the shell of Elias’s ear. Elias felt the sweep of his eyelashes against his cheek, the curve of his smile pressed against his earlobe. Close and not close enough. “While you have everything to lose. Yes, this suits me quite well. I can leave a door open, but I can’t promise that he’ll make it back out.”</p><p>“I would rather you didn’t, actually. We both know how you are with promises.”</p><p>The Archivist was going to find his way back out. And Elias was going to win another wager, one that he and Peter had never formally set the terms of, one made up of many, many smaller bets. His Archivist would find his way out by the light of Martin Blackwood. Elias did not Know this. He knew this, and he marveled at the lives of such simple things, at the wonderfully straightforward ways they could love each other.</p><p>Martin Blackwood, Forsaken-touched, and Jonathan Sims of the Eye, reaching for each other with their potent mixture of faith and familiarity, desiring nothing more than the chance to continue to do things they’d have to forgive each other for. No doubt Peter would think of it as an illusion. Elias no longer bothered with telling him things he would not believe. A demonstration would be more effective.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Long ago, their habit had been sneaking out of fundraising galas. (Peter had been young then, and James Wright giddy about an unusually curious Lukas—which meant he was not particularly curious for a person, yes, but for a Lukas? A complete outlier.) Then their habit had been leaving one side of the bed to cool by morning. Now their habit was keeping score.</p><p>When Peter had asked the first time, fading into Elias’s office at the tail end of dawn, Elias hadn’t known that his hand had been poised over some imaginary whiteboard, ready to make the first mark. He caught on soon enough. </p><p>It had been a warm, moonless night when Elias had said that Peter could stay in Moorland House the next time he was sick of the sea, and Peter had replied that frankly, he might swear off land entirely, because there was always the chance that Elias might be somewhere there. Then he’d vanished into The Lonely, but not before leaving Elias one last remark to remember him by: I always knew it was going to come to this. </p><p>Elias had been the one to propose, the next time. He knew how it had all gone wrong last time. He knew how to fix it. Despite being personally familiar with all the evidence that disproved it, Elias continued to put stock into determinism.</p><p>Sometimes he was even validated for it. Later on he would come back to the moment he realized he knew what was going to happen. “It won’t be that bad, Peter. You’ll see,” he was saying, but Peter was already looking at him with the kind of hatred Elias could only wish to draw out of him sometimes. By the time the Archivist arrived, Elias had already come to terms with the cost of his miscalculation.</p><p>He had overestimated the amount of force he’d needed to apply. But that was ten pendulum swings ago, and the next swing was the Archivist reaching for the Eye, the Eye reaching back, shared sight flooding into every place it was welcome. </p><p>Elias was in The Lonely. Elias was at the Panopticon. They’d been in houses, the cabin of a ship, several different offices, a jail cell. There were only two places that mattered in the end. </p><p>The Archivist saw Peter, so Elias saw him. Peter told his story with his gaze lowered. The shadow of his hat obscured his eyes. His statement contained everything Elias thought it would contain, nothing Elias ever needed to hear.</p><p>When he told the Archivist about Elias, he fell unnaturally still, as though he could finally feel the cold of The Lonely seize his body after so many years of immunity. His bones strained as Beholding sank into his unwilling mind. There is more to say, screeched the Eye, the force of it already too much. Elias tasted blood. Of all the times Peter chose to put up a fight.</p><p>“I’m done,” Peter said, looking up at last, his eyes meeting the Archivist’s. The words sounded new, but only because Elias was not hearing them in person. Or perhaps because they were finally said without the relief of surrender, without the expectation of being taken back in the future.</p><p>Tell him, some part of Elias was saying. This was the part that already half-knew that Peter wouldn’t. What was being asked for was Elias’s secret; the Archivist was the one asking. The last domino fell with one quiet clack, too far away for any hand to catch. Especially not Elias’s hands, which had pushed the very first piece. Hands that weren’t even really his. Had not been his for a very long time.</p><p>Go on, resist, the Eye growled. Stand your ground. Let me See just how powerful my Archivist really is.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Exhibit D.</strong>
</p><p>Peter only ever made eye contact with Martin when he spoke of Elias.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There wasn’t a single thing in the Institute that could be considered a record of Peter’s existence. He’d left no mark of himself on the office he’d borrowed, except for the carving of his name on the door, a formality. He had never even touched that.</p><p>There were no portraits of him. He had never sat for any. Elias had once commissioned one, painted according to Elias’s description, and Peter had discreetly set it on fire the first chance he got. (Elias had been asleep.)</p><p>There was, perhaps, the ring on Elias’s finger, the first one he’d ever received from Peter. Peter had to present it without its box when he proposed, because he’d carried it around for a while when Elias was aboard the <em> Tundra. </em>One afternoon, Elias had vomited all over him—and, by extension, on the ring box in his coat pocket—because the waves had rocked them a little too violently. Not even supernatural powers could protect you from seasickness.</p><p>The ring wasn’t more than met the eye. It could not provide Elias with any memories beyond the ones he was capable of reaching for on his own.</p><p>No point in dwelling on impossible things, but Elias did wonder if there could have been any way he could have gotten Peter’s statement in writing. If he had only decided to compel him once into doing it—when Peter might have wanted to goad Elias into offending him, just so he could hold it against him—perhaps there would be something for Elias to sink into now. Some reading material for the End Times. Then he could slip into that unfamiliar headspace he had been so careful not to breach—a matter of strategy, he’d told himself then. He shouldn’t have been so practical.</p><p>It wasn’t like there was any shortage of entertainment for the man who ruled the Panopticon. He could choose between the drums of Slaughter, the gentle chiming of Flesh, the sounds of little feet running around in the Dark. Still his eye was drawn to the fog that seemed like it could stretch far away, infinitely, into the horizon, undoubtedly empty but for the houses that were not homes. </p><p>He peered into every inch of clouded air. There, in the distance, Elias thought he saw the mist darken. Perhaps there was a shadow of a man obscured by the haze. A figure turned away from him, looking elsewhere in perpetuity, choosing to exist only where Elias could not be.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>come say hi on twitter! i’m @kenmacarena (mostly i talk about haikyuu though)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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